rom main-truck to
water-line.

LIII

SHIPS, SHELLS, AND LETTERS

Strange! how little sense of calamity came with them--at first. So
graceful they were. So fitted--like waterfowl--to every mood of air and
tide; their wings all furled, their neat bodies breasting the angry
flood by the quiet power of their own steam and silent submerged wheels.
So like to the numberless crafts which in kinder days, under friendly
tow, had come up this same green and tawny reach and passed on to the
queenly city, laden with gifts, on the peaceful embassies of the world.

But, ah! how swiftly, threateningly they grew: the smaller, two-masted
fore-and-afts, each seemingly unarmed but for one monster gun pivoted
amidships, and the towering, wide-armed three-masters, the low and the
tall consorting like dog and hunter. Now, as they came on, a nice eye
could make out, down on their hulls, light patches of new repair where
our sunken fleet had so lately shot and rammed them, and, hanging over
the middle of each ship's side in a broad, dark square to protect her
vitals, a mass of anchor chains. Their boarding-netting, too, one saw,
drawn high round all their sides, and now more guns--and more!--and
more! the huger frowning over the bulwarks, the lesser in unbroken rows,
scowling each from its own port-hole, while every masthead revealed
itself a little fort bristling with arms and men. Yes, and there, high
in the clouds of rigging, no longer a vague pink flutter now, but
brightly red-white-and-blue and smilingly angry--what a strange
home-coming for it! ah, what a strange home-coming after a scant
year-and-a-half of banishment!--the flag of the Union, rippling from
every peak.

"Ain' dey neveh gwine shoot?" asked a negro lad.

"Not till they're out of line with us," said Anna so confidently as to
draw a skeptical grunt from his mother, and for better heart let a tune
float silently in and out on her breath:

"I loves to be a beau to de ladies.
I loves to shake a toe wid de ladies--"

She felt her maid's touch. Charlie was aiming his great gun, and on
either side of her Isaac and Ben were repeating their injunctions. She
spoke out:

"If they all shoot true we're safe enough now."

"An' ef de ships don't," put in Isaac, "dey'll mighty soon--"

The prophecy was lost. All the shore guns blazed and crashed. The white
smoke belched and spread. Broken window-panes jingled. Wails and moans
from the slave women were silenced b